


Worlds Apart

by TheStrangeSeaWolf



Category: The Hour (TV)
Genre: Child Death, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Mental Breakdown, Much Emotional Hurt/A Bit of Comfort, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, POV Lix Storm, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:54:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25510075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStrangeSeaWolf/pseuds/TheStrangeSeaWolf
Summary: They finally found their daughter... What follows next is heartwrenching, as everybody who watched season 2 of "The Hour" knows. Here is Lix' point of view during that famous scene...
Relationships: Randall Brown/Lix Storm
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	Worlds Apart

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a Lix introspection of THAT scene in ages. A twitter convo reminded me, and so I did. A huge thank you goes to [agoodtuckering](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodtuckering/pseuds/agoodtuckering) for being my beta on this and correcting my English. If you like Lix/Randall, you should definitely check out their [The Hour Stories](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1598038).

_ “Died. June the same year. “ _

The moment Lix read the statement and spoke the words aloud, her world fell apart –  _ again.  _

She tried to focus on the document before her eyes as she spoke.

_ “Killed with both her parents... in an air raid.” _

The glimpse of hope; the smallest, almost miniscule bit of hope that her daughter was out there, doing well, making the best of her life, a strong, young woman, raised by caring adoptive parents, despite the rough start, despite her mom failing,  _ abandoning _ her, deciding to give her away before she was even born… It was all lost. It crushed her. It wounded her so much more than she could have ever anticipated.

“Would you forgive me if I asked you to go?”

_ Randall.  _ Of course. He couldn’t tick the neat little box in his head. He needed to create another neat little box to tick and file away now that his  _ daughter  _ was dead. He probably needed to arrange his desk anew, or sort a few files. Or file away the report. Or needed to do whatever Randall needed to do to be happy with how it had all turned out. To move on again.

“I… I can't move.“

It was the truth. She couldn’t bear to move. She felt as if she was paralyzed. The pain of losing her daughter, a daughter she had never known and now, would never get to know, washed over her.

_ “Please.” _

Randall. Oh, Randall. She tried to ignore him.

“Please, I need you to...” 

“No,” she shot back. She didn’t care what  _ he _ needed to do.  _ She _ needed to sit here and try to gather herself again, as shattered as she was. Time to put the pieces back together.

He shifted his notebook from one side of the desk to the other.

_ Yes, Randall, put your tiny, little world into order again. Everything neat. Everything tidy.  _

“No, Randall, I won't go. I won't.“

She sat back and folded her arms.

“You just... just do what you need to do.”

She was on the verge of tears and she didn’t care about whatever he would do next to cope. She needed to sit here and gather her wild, frayed thoughts and scattered emotions.

Randall began to set a file straight. Then, he reached for his lighter and the cigarette case and set it straight, just so, so that it was exactly parallel to the documents on the table. He placed his lighter  _ askew _ on the case.

That was the moment she realized it.

He was  _ not _ okay.

He was not ticking a box or fidgeting or doing any number of things he so often did. 

He was…

Randall closed the book on the right side of his desk without putting a  _ bookmark  _ inside or memorizing the  _ page number  _ beforehand.

He opened the book again, but to a  _ random  _ page. There was no way he could have found the right page in that instant and there hadn’t even been a bookmark inside. She clearly saw.

When he was grabbing one of the neatly arranged papers and put it without care  _ on top _ of the others, when he grabbed a file folder and put it  _ carelessly _ on the other side of the desk, and  _ back again _ , she knew it for sure:

His world had fallen apart upon reading that damn report, just like her own.

What she was witnessing was the beginning of a meltdown.

She instantly knew, when she saw how he had snatched the pile of photographs and spread them all so  _ forcefully _ on the desk, as if he was dealing out cards in a game he had already lost. Fate had dealt them a rather cruel hand, and he chose to take it out on the photographs.

Randall continued with another set of files, folders, and documents, more violently than he had done with the photos.

She had read him all wrong. Since the moment he had returned, she had read Randall wrong. He hadn’t come back for another step on the ladder of his career. He hadn’t gone on a search for his daughter so he could neatly file away the information of her whereabouts. 

This wasn’t about ticking boxes. 

_ This was deeper than that. _

She was too distraught herself to grasp what  _ exactly  _ it was, but what she was witnessing right now was a devastated man who was in the process of losing a battle to keep his composure.

The papers flew even more viciously now.

The always controlled, distant, calm, tidy, enervatingly composed man was overwhelmed by his emotions.

It hurt her to watch it, but she kept her gaze on him. She felt hot tears flowing now, down her cheeks, but she stayed. Even when stacks of papers flew towards her, she stayed.

She stayed, although she wasn’t paralyzed anymore.

She stayed, because in the middle of this breakdown, in the center of this storm, in this fit of rage against a cruel fate, she saw something else.

As the papers and books flew, the stacking tray hitting the floor and the blinds rattling, she finally saw him again. 

_ There he was. _

He was deeply wounded, raw, and emotional.

He was strange and broken, perhaps beyond repair.

_ But there he was. _

He had always been there, even while he had been away. He had come back, but she hadn’t recognized him.  _ Not really. _ Not in his whole essence. She had been blind until this very moment.

It was him.

_ Randall Brown. _

A man with many quirks and an array of strange behaviors.

A man with tight boundaries and limits to what he could and couldn’t do.

A man who had to do things  _ exactly _ how he needed to do them.

But also: 

A man with  _ passion _ .

A passion to write.

A passion to learn.

A passion to dig deeper than others.

A passion to persist and to never give up and let go.

The passion she had felt when he had held her that night.

The passion that he had only allowed her to see when he had thought they were about to die.

The passion that was hidden inside but was burning stronger than in any man she had known before or known after. 

_ There he was. _

And there he broke down.

_ Brutal. _

_ Ruthless. _

_ Merciless. _

As always, merciless, almost hateful, against himself.

His knees gave way and fell to the floor, leant on his desk now, his head slamming down upon his arms.

_ Wasted, wounded, finished. _

She moved to his side, wanting to embrace him.

To hold him, to show him he wasn’t alone.

_ That she was there.  _ That she was there for him, that she would not leave him, and he didn’t have to face this gut-wrenching pain alone.

That they were both gravely wounded, but that they would face it together.

As she wrapped her arm around him, he startled and fended her off. She immediately realized her mistake.

The man who needed to have everything in the right order, neatly filed away and arranged, organized, was a vulnerable, emotional mess at the moment. The man who hated disorder was purely chaos on the inside. He needed to know what happened, needed to make sense of everything again, and he needed…  _ structure.  _ Understanding.

A soft, but firm stroke from his back towards his right shoulder, so he knew she was going to hug him. A reassuring grip on his left arm. Then, she firmly took the back of his head and guided him down to rest it on his hands.

_ Grounding him. _

Making sure he felt secure.

Only when she was sure he was ready and could anticipate and understand it, she wrapped herself around him, resting her head gently against his. 

He was crying. Silently, helplessly sobbing. She felt it more than she heard it.

She gently stroked his head.

It was more than he could deal with at the moment, so he grabbed her hand.

But it wasn’t a rejection. 

_ It was a reassurance and a plea. _

He wanted her to stay near. He wanted to feel her close.

Their bond, it was still there. And perhaps, it was stronger than she had ever anticipated and foreseen.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> And it is _still_ a crime we didn't get a season 3!


End file.
